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Doctor Glick’s Dog, or an Alternate Ending to “Calamity Jane- How the West Began”

Doctor Glick did indeed have a dog, a fact we know from a passage from the book “Ghost Towns of Montana,” by Donald C. Miller (pp. 155-156), who references The Hardin Tribune Herald, September 19, 1930, when he writes:

“Plummer’s body was thrown into a pit which already contained the remains of George Ives. Then, through the efforts of Dr. John (sic) Glick of Bannack, Plummer’s remains were partially exhumed. The physician had treated the sheriff at gunpoint, for a bullet wound. The doctor’s curiosity got the better of him; he wanted to see if the bullet he thought remained in Plummer’s right forearm was still there. Taking leave of the dance he was attending, Dr. Glick severed the arm, stored it in a snow drift and returned to the soiree. A dog found the arm and dragged it to his mistress, who was attending the dance. Dr. Glick kept his cool, retrieved the arm, and managed to examine it later. He found the bullet.”

It seems quite a stretch that Glick would have left a party to sever an arm from a cadaver, and we are not given the name of a person who tells us this story, so we can be skeptical of its veracity. However, Glick did do an autopsy at some point, for Langford tells us, in “Vigilante Days and Ways” (p. 162):

“An examination of Plummer’s arm after his death, disclosed the fact that the lower fracture of the radius never united, but formed a false joint. The bullet passed into the marrow of the lower end of the bone, and was stopped in its progress by the bones of the hand. From subsequent use of the hand, while Plummer was sheriff, the bullet became worn as smooth as polished silver.”

The first few versions of my historical fiction “Calamity” incorporated this in the final scene. I had Glick stashing something unseen to the reader in a snowbank, then proceeding to the dance. In the final moments of the story, the dog arrived at the dance and dropped that something at Glick’a feet as he danced with Dez. Dez screamed when she saw it was Plummer’s arm. THE END. Early readers, however, found this ending too off-putting, so I removed it.